The sights of the city and the foreign settlement were soon exhausted. But one never tired of watching the moving pictures of soldier life, or of visiting the scenes of the deadly fighting memorable for ever in the history of North China. The long stretches of mud flats lying between the Chinese town and the Concessions, over which shot and shell had flown for weeks; the roofless villages; the shattered houses; the loopholed and bullet‐splashed walls. There, during long days and anxious nights, the usually pacific Chinaman, spurred on by fanatic hate and lust of blood, had waged a bitter war with all the devilish cunning of his race. There the mad rushes of frenzied Boxers, reckless of life, hurling themselves fearlessly with antiquated weapons against a well‐armed foe. There the Imperial soldiers, trained by European officers, showed that their instruction had borne fruit. From every cover, natural or improvised, they used their magazine rifles with accuracy and effect. Lieutenant Fair, R.N., Flag‐Lieutenant to Admiral Seymour, told me that he has often watched them picking up the range as carefully and judiciously as a Boer marksman. And his Admiral, conspicuous in white uniform and dauntlessly exposing himself on the defences, escaped death again and again only by a miracle while men fell at his side. Nor was the shooting of the Chinese gunners to be despised. Lieutenant Hutchinson, H.M.S. _Terrible_, in a redoubt with two of his ship’s famous guns, engaged in a duel at three thousand yards with a Chinese battery of modern ordnance. Of six shells hurled at him, two struck the parapet in front, two fell just past his redoubt, and two almost within it. Fortunately none burst. Had the mandarins responsible for the munitions of war proved as true to their trust as the gunners, the _Terrible’s_ detachment would have been annihilated; but when the ammunition captured afterwards from the enemy was examined, it was found that the bursting charges of the shells had been removed and replaced by sand. The corrupt officials had extracted the powder and sold it. A naval ·450 Maxim was most unpopular in the defences. Its neighbourhood was too unsafe, for whenever it opened fire the smoke betrayed it to the Chinese gunners, and shells at once fell fast around it. It had finally to be withdrawn. But the desperate losses among the Boxers opposed to Seymour’s gallant column, the heavy fighting around Tientsin, and the capture of the city broke the back of the Chinese resistance. And when the Allied Army advanced on Pekin, no determined stand was made after the first battle. The capital, with its famous and formidable walls, fell almost without a blow. A sore disappointment to the British Siege Train, who, hurried out to South Africa to batter down the forts of Pretoria, found their services uncalled for there; and then, despatched to China for the siege of Pekin, arrived to learn that there, too, they were not needed.